Absolutely Us
Do we remember that the Absolute and the Relative (conditioned) are also a pair of complementaries? It follows that neither can exist independently of the other, and that everything relative is inherently absolute.
A hierarchy of dualities may be convenient for analytical purposes, but it would be unnecessary to suppose that it actually exists.
We may be sure, therefore, that the subject-objects duality which we are is also directly the Absolute and the Relative. And, since the Absolute is divisible infinitely or not at all, each of us is the Absolute absolutely.
The Old Man in the Corner
Professor Suzuki tells us of a Chinese official, resting in his office after his day's work, who awoke to a satori during a thunderstorm and remarked: 'And there was the old man in all his homeliness.'
Perhaps any image in dualistic language is as good as any other, any description of the indescribable being only a pointing finger, but the homely old man in the corner may be more significant to us than the Buddha-nature, the original face, pure consciousness, or universal mind.
There he sits, the homely old man, always in his corner, hidden by the smoke-screen of thought and phenomena.
